October 19, 1998

Honorable Pat Hess
Judge, Juvenile Court
Anderson County Courthouse
Clinton, TN 37716

Dear Judge Hess,

Anderson County has chosen to fund three full time judges, two for General Sessions Court and one for Juvenile Court. These courts handle (A) juvenile delinquency, truancy and unruliness and some custody matters (Juvenile Court) and (B) non-jury misdemeanor jurisdiction and limited non-jury civil jurisdiction (General Sessions Court).

This is a very generous judicial allotment for courts of limited civil and criminal jurisdiction in a county this size. By contrast there are only two State judges in the courts of general, civil and criminal jurisdiction in Anderson County (jurisdiction over all civil and criminal cases, including divorces, indicted misdemeanors and all felony cases, all civil and criminal jury trials and appeals from the General Sessions and Juvenile Courts).

The Anderson County District Attorney’s office has historically provided attorneys to prosecute delinquency and status offenses in Juvenile Court and criminal cases in Sessions Court. This practice dates from when the county had one full-time Sessions judge who also handled Juvenile Court, (Jennings Meredith)—the work that now takes three judges. Now our prosecutorial resources are stretched and we can no longer continue unchanged our coverage of the county courts since these three county full-time judges have recently extended their regular court days and multiplied "special settings" on other days.

The District Attorney is a State official (paid by the State) and not a county employee. The number of attorneys which the State of Tennessee allocates to a District Attorney’s office is tied to the number of State court judges (in our case 2), not to the number of judges a county chooses to fund. The primary duty of the District Attorney is to attend to the State Courts where all felonies are prosecuted as well as many misdemeanors. Next we have a duty to prosecute adults charged with criminal offenses in Sessions Court. Juvenile court prosecutions are not criminal cases under the law, and the juvenile court is not a state court.

Very few prosecutors in Tennessee, and usually only those in larger counties, regularly appear in juvenile court. Those which do often have special county-funded prosecuting attorneys for the purpose. Our office can no longer provide attorneys in Juvenile Court for status offenses (defined as acts which would not be criminal if committed by an adult). These are primarily truancy and unruliness. In this matter I can, as District Attorney, exercise the charging discretion I have under the Constitution and statutes of Tennessee. This does not mean no attorneys are available for these cases. In fact, the County Attorney or any other attorney approved by the Court can handle any case in Juvenile Court so long as the District Attorney does not object or intervene.

I would be amenable to discussing with the County Commission the possibility of funding another full-time or part-time attorney to work through my office to cover Juvenile Court. The County Commission needs to recognize, as the State Legislature does, that as you multiply the number of judges, the number of prosecutors needs to increase. These issues were raised by me years ago at the several League of Women Voters public forums held around the county during the effort to create the Sessions Court Division II.

For right now, we will cease prosecuting only status offenses in Juvenile Court. However, if the Juvenile Court continues to schedule special settings or the county’s courts continue to expand (with no increase in my staff) it may be necessary to cut back further on our presence in Juvenile Court.

In no way am I minimizing the importance of these laws. But with limited resources our priority has to be criminal prosecution. No one other than the district attorney can prosecute crime in Anderson County, but the law does allow others to handle these juvenile matters.

Very truly yours,

James N. Ramsey
District Attorney General
Seventh Judicial District
State of Tennessee

JNR/tg

cc: Anderson County Commissioners
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